Halloween Pumpkins

The annual ritual of pumpkin carving is getting a little more fun these days as Grace gets old enough to do more than just stay for the first two minutes and then walk away, leaving all the work for me. Amp had seen a picture of a neat idea for a pumpkin, and we tried to replicate it. It looked ok, but the pumpkins weren't quite the right size to get the effect we were looking for. Next year, I think we will try this again, having learned what to do and what not to do this year. The girls really liked the idea of the pumpkin skull coming out of the pumpkin head, we just need to get the right size and shape of orange pumpkin for the outside. The other pumpkin is Grace and Mom's traditional pumpkin.

Pumpkin skull explosion before:

Pumpkin skull after:

Grace's Pumpkin:

We certainly aren't pros at this by a long shot, but it is a messy good time.

The Jinx is On

Well, since making fun of Hurricane Sandy a few days ago, the storm has slowly been making its way up the coast, offshore, but is set to turn sharply northwest. Inland. Right at me. It is being called a hurricane meets a nor'easter meets a full moon high tide... making for what they are calling a storm of potential historic proportions, with unprecedented flooding. Lovely. The most recent predicted storm track I saw had the eye shifting a little south of what they were previously estimating. I think it now passes directly over my house sometime Tuesday morning.

School has been cancelled Monday and Tuesday already, they have declared pre-emptive states of emergency in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The governor of PA and the mayor of Philadelphia, among others, are urging evacuations from all low lying areas, and that all non-essential emergency personnel stay off the roads. The amount of rain we could get in one day would equal five feet of snow. Yikes.

For those in the US of a certain age, I am starting to feel like the person in the margarine commercial (many years ago) who fooled with Mother Nature.

I don't consider myself a big-time weather worrier, but they have been talking this up enough the past few days that I am prepared to camp in my house with no power for days if necessary. Some of that backpacking gear might come in handy after all if we need to rough it in our own house. Non-perishable food stocks, water and juice and Gatorade, water filtration, all laundry done, battery supplies full, everything charged, cars gassed up...

An overcast rainy and breezy day today is supposed to deteriorate tomorrow throughout the day, peaking overnight and into Tuesday morning. But where and when the storm actually goes, nobody knows.

And now we wait.

Frankenstorm?

Well, the weather forecasters are happy. A combination of Hurricane Sandy coming up from the south, a big storm coming out of the west, and a blast of cold air coming down from Canada sets up the possibility (yet again) of the world coming to an end sometime late this weekend or early next week. Last I heard, we could get 3 feet of rain followed by 10 feet of snow all the while getting winds that will knock down any tree taller than me. In addition to canceling Halloween, we may have power outages lasting through Thanksgiving and jeopardizing the Christmas holiday season. Needless to say, the kids are not pleased. I have assured them that everything will be ok and that we will almost certainly be able to leave the house by New Years, provided of course that our french toast supply holds out.

I would stay and write more, but I need to get to the store and buy eggs, milk and bread before they sell out.

[PS (Fri 10/26/12) - Why do I have a bad feeling that we are now going to lose power for days?]

Asia - Keswick Theater - 10/20/2012

I had the thrill of seeing Asia live last night for the first time in 29 years, and it was a great show. Amp and I had originally intended to see the show with The Neighbors, but after buying the tickets months ago, they realized they would be traveling and unable to go. Brother Dave and Leo filled in admirably, and all seemed to have a good time.

Steve Howe

This was only my second time to the Keswick Theater in Glenside, but it is a nice place to see a show - an old 1,300 seat theater (with a bar) where no seat is a bad seat or too far from the stage. One of the things that had me especially excited about this concert was the fact that we had seats in the sixth row, dead center. They turned out to be every bit as good as I hoped they would be. And the thought of seeing one of my favorite bands from my teen years brought back a lot of fond memories. This is the 30th anniversary tour, and all four original members were on board: Steve Howe (from Yes) on guitar, John Wetton (from King Crimson) on bass and lead vocals, Carl Palmer (from Emerson Lake and Palmer) on drums, and Geoff Downes (from Yes and the Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star, the first ever video played on MTV) on keyboards and backing vocals.

After buying the tickets, I did some digging into what all these guys had been doing in recent years, and learned a bunch of things I didn't know. Apparently, Asia for the most part never ceased to exist in the 1990s and 2000s, but continued on with a wide array of non-original members coming and going. Albums that I had never heard of were released; people I had never heard of were in the band. But in 2008, the original lineup released an album (Phoenix). And toured some. And then released an album in 2010 (Omega), and toured some. And now have released a third new album ("XXX"). So they have actually put out more material and toured more in the last 5 years than they did back in the day. All while mixing in Yes albums and Yes tours, and Emerson Lake and Palmer reunions, solo and other small group projects, etc.

I do like the surprise of not knowing what a band is going to play at a show, but I was curious enough about this one that I cheated and looked up set lists online a few days before. What I could find for the prior few shows was pretty consistent from one to the next, so I jotted down the most recent one and took it with me. With one exception on Howe's acoustic solo original piece, it was dead on. So this is exactly what the show was, with my notes and comments (all songs are from the first album, Asia, unless otherwise noted):

Downes and his U-shaped 3-tier stack of keyboards

1. Only Time Will Tell - This was not one of my absolute favorites from the first album (although I liked everything), but it was a terrific song to start the show with. Downes started in with the classical-ish intro, Palmer led Wetton in to establish a solid base, and then Howe came in over the top with an ethereal guitar line. It sounded just like... Asia. Probably my biggest "I wonder..." coming into the show was how the vocals would hold up. Their sound was primarily defined by lush keyboards and multilayered harmonies on the choruses. As performers age, the first thing to go is generally the voice, and I wondered how badly that might be the case here (as their ages run from 60 through 65). I was pleasantly surprised, and would continue to be throughout the evening. Wetton's voice was clear and strong, and range was not too much of an issue as his parts were never typically very high (so less upper range to lose). The harmonies were interesting (and very effective for the most part), and I am still not 100% sure how they did it. The only band member singing backup was Downes, but it sounded like more than one person. He was typically singing into a pair of mics, and I am guessing that they ran the signals through electronics that varied the end result just enough in tone and effect that one person became like several similar but slightly different people. Howe had a stand mic, but I don't remember ever seeing him use it. Palmer was singing along at times, but didn't have a mic. It worked fine.
2. Wildest Dreams - A favorite and very well done. 
3. Face on the Bridge ("XXX") - The first of three songs from the new album, and I liked it a lot.
4. Time Again - Perhaps my favorite song because of the complicated instrumentals. I loved it. By this point, several songs in, I had lapsed into focusing primarily on Steve Howe. Being about 30 feet from him, I could see every move of his fingers with perfect clarity and detail, and I was completely mesmerized. We could see every little detail of everything down to the level of who was wearing what kind of rings on which fingers. Very very cool. The term that kept coming to mind watching Howe was "spider fingers" - long thin fingers dancing effortlessly up and down the fretboard. "Awesome" is an overused word, but I think it really can be called "awe" when your mouth is literally hanging open.
5. Tomorrow the World ("XXX") - Another good new song.
6. Ride Easy - This is an early track recorded along with the first album, which according to Wetton's intro, they wanted to include on the first album but the record company people told them not to. Wetton thought the record company people were wrong, and I agree. I have this on a 1990 "best of" CD and have always liked it a lot.
7. (something Vivaldi) - Steve Howe acoustic guitar solo part 1. Stunning classical guitar piece, with Howe seated alone at center stage. He later said that this was Vivaldi, but I don't know what specifically.
8. Bach Chorale Prelude - Acoustic guitar solo part 2. More beautiful classical.
9. All in the Course of a Day - Acoustic guitar solo part 3. An up tempo contemporary piece. Fast and clean. I know I saw Dave watching with rapt attention through this part...
10. I Know How You Feel ("XXX") - Wetton/Downes duo part 1. The third song from the new album, and another winner. Looks like I will be getting this album. Wetton singing by himself with only keyboards behind him showed that his voice was still nice and clear, if ever so slightly challenged in the higher range.
11. Don't Cry (Alpha) - Wetton/Downes duo part 2. Wetton jokingly introduced this as the most popular song the band had ever done, and the one that broke them up back in 1983. I don't know the full story behind the breakup, but I do know that despite pretty much the entire second album (Alpha) having been written by Wetton and Downes, Wetton left the band prior to the tour for that album. The famous "Asia in Asia" concert video in Japan has Greg Lake on vocals and bass instead of Wetton. Whatever the full story is, and whether or not you can read anything into this song being performed by only the two that wrote it, it was another nice duo arrangement of a good song. 
12. The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (Alpha) - Wetton/Downes duo part 3. This started out as a duo, but partway through the other two returned to the stage and finished up the song as a full band like on the album.
13. Cutting it Fine - I remember this as being one of the less memorable songs from the first album, but the live version was really strong, driven by a good guitar line. I have to go back to this on the album and give it another listen.
14. Holy War (Omega) - More new-ish music. This was probably my least favorite of the five newer songs they did, but it was still pretty decent.
15. (Drum solo) - Palmer is known as one of the better drummers out there, and is famous for long solos with lots of acrobatics, and we certainly got one of those. We got tricks with sticks, gong playing, crowd interaction, and some fabulous drumming. The crowd loved it. I remember him doing something similar way back in the day, and I don't think he's lost much of anything in the intervening years. He seemed to be having an absolute blast performing.
16. An Extraordinary Life (Phoenix) - Another newer song, and another really nice one. At this point I am planning on buying myself some newer Asia albums for sure... probably all three of them. This is the last of the newer material and it has all been good.
17. Here Comes the Feeling - Back to the first album.
18. Open Your Eyes (Alpha) - A longer song from the days of "everything will be 4 minutes long for MTV and the radio". Very typical Asia in terms of soft vocal bits interspersed with driving full-band bits. The difference between soft and loud is one thing on an album, but I absolutely love that feeling in the concert hall when a soft part dives back into something louder and you can feel the contrast through the air, through the floor, through your chair... The song had a nice long instrumental crescendo building to a climax before the band left the stage.
19. Sole Survivior - Encore part 1. The crowd was on its feet for much of this, and the band really sounded great. I loved watching Howe on this as he played pretty much the whole song using a wahwah pedal. Great song. Which led us inevitably into...
20. Heat of the Moment - Encore part 2. Not necessarily my favorite, but there was probably no way that this wasn't going to be either the first or last song of the show. The band really seemed to be enjoying themselves (Howe even looked up from his guitar I think...), and the main part of the song led into a house-lights-up audience participation segment. Cutesy, but a nice way to end the show.

Asia in 2010

And with that the concert was over. Two hours end to end, and I was thrilled; if nothing else, it reminded me that the kind of music that I liked in my youth is pretty much still the kind of music I like now. Songs with a nice melody, but also songs that can be musically complex and technically impressive in the execution. Now, as well as back then, Steve Howe is the single biggest thing that makes this band for me (much the way that he is a major reason I always liked Yes). In addition to being a fabulous technical guitarist, I like the way he fits into the band(s); he is not a standard play-chords-through-much-of-the-song-and-then-solo-a-little guitarist. There is chord playing of course, but much of his time is spent playing primary or secondary melody lines, descant parts, background soloing, riffs and fills, all of which make the music much more interesting to me.

Bleached out pic from my seat - close!!

Guitar notes - Other than the acoustic section and a few bits where he played a few bars on a second guitar (with effects) on a stand, Howe played the guitar in the picture above for the entire show. I don't know what it is... but I have seen pictures of him playing this exact guitar in much much earlier Yes pictures, so he has had it for a very long time (or an identical one). He used one Line-6 cabinet with two mics in front of it, and a few pedals and stomp boxes, but for the most part relied on a clean bright sound with minimal extras.

Great show, and you know what? I do feel young again... :-)

Moody Blues - Never Comes the Day...

Anticipation. I have tickets for my wife and I and our friends from across the street to do an overnight trip to Atlantic City to see the Moody Blues at Caesars Palace at the end of November. Having been to a concert last Friday (Rush), and another on tap for tomorrow night (Asia), I am very much in a live music frame of mind.

The Moody Blues have been my favorite band since high school, and I have seen them live at least a dozen times, dating as far back as 1982/1983 when they toured for The Present, and the opening act was Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble. It has been a few years since I last saw them (at the Tower Theater I believe), and I am anxious to see them while they are still touring.

A few recent YouTube clips of concert footage from this year:

• The Story in Your Eyes. The perfect song. Great lyrics, great melody, great little guitar solo.
• You and Me. A song I have never seen live. Apparently I will soon...
• Peak Hour. A lesser known cut from their very first album, Days of Future Passed, from 1967.
• Say It With Love, from Keys of the Kingdom.
• Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band. Classic.
• And thrown in for a chuckle, Gypsy, and Tuesday Afternoon from the Isle of Wight festival in 1970... Note that Justin is playing the exact same Gibson cherry red ES-335 in all these clips...

It is odd to see my musical idols in their twilight years, a little saggy and with a pot-belly here or there, but that they can still do this in the vicinity of their 70th birthdays is amazing to me (Justin is 66, John 67 and Graeme 71). They might not be what they were, but when I close my eyes it is still Justin Hayward and the Moody Blues. It works for me...

Guitar - Observations

Having spent a decent bit of spare time noodling around on my various guitars recently, I have come to the following conclusions (some relevant, some less so):

• I'm not very good. Not very good at all...
• ...but I do have a good feel for music. I just need to practice enough to turn that aptitude into the ability to play.
• I have so very much to learn...
• ...but I want to learn.
• My Strat is a very very very nice guitar (yep, it's worth at least three verys).
• The Les Paul is a very nice guitar.
• The ES-335 copy is what I hoped it would be after all. Thankfully. Dreams die hard...
• My technique stinks. I hold the pick wrong, put my fingers in the wrong place, hold the neck wrong in the left hand... some of which can be fixed... some of which, after 30 years of bad habits, will need to be accommodated for. On the bright side, watching YouTube concert footage of some of my guitar idols seems to indicate that their technique isn't text book either. This is a good thing.
• I am thankful for Dave's experience in being ahead of me on the learning curve (way way ahead). He can drag me along with him, at least a little bit...

So... I am grateful for Dave, and for YouTube lessons, and just wish I had more time....

Rush - Philadelphia - 10/12/12

Rush is one of my favorite bands, and I have been fortunate enough to see them twice before, both at various times on the Snakes and Arrows tour for their last album. They are touring this fall in support of their newest album, Clockwork Angels. The new album is somewhat of a concept album, and going into the show last night I liked it, but didn't love it the same way that I have the previous album. It is musically complex and interesting to listen to, but it is far from a "catchy tune singalong album". When this tour was first announced, Dave and I discussed going, as did my neighbor Anthony, but I was already lined up to see Asia next weekend at the Keswick, so concerts on back to back weekends seemed perhaps too much of an indulgence.

Fast forward to last week, when Anthony raised the idea again, to a somewhat lukewarm reception on my part. I wanted to go but still didn't know if I wanted to do another concert. Then we all went to the Bull Riding event at the Wells Fargo center last Friday, and they were advertising upcoming events heavily, such as Rush... We talked. I caved. We bought tickets on StubHub. And last night, off we went...

Show time was 7:30pm, which we both found unusual, so we left home a little after 5:30, and headed down to the arena. We got there before 6:30, and had time to listen to some Rush on the car stereo and have a beer or two before heading in. We grabbed a quick meal of stadium food (decent but ridiculously over priced, of course), and got to our seats promptly at 7:30, just in case they started on time. We were on the short end of the arena, second level; pretty far away but facing the stage head-on, which for a Rush show is perfect given the amount of video that they show on the huge screens behind the stage. Section 207, row 10, seats 8 and 9 to be specific.

The band took the stage after their usual pre-show video, and launched into Subdivisons, followed by Roll the Bones. Neither of these are favorites of mine on the studio versions, but both are very good live, especially Subdivisions, with Geddy Lee rolling through a nice fluid base line while playing keyboards and singing. I'm not sure how he does it. My jealousy knows no bounds... The rest of the ten-song (65 minute) first set was a mix of older stuff, such as Grand Designs, The Pass, Force Ten and The Analog Kid. One of the highlights for me was the last song, Far Cry, off of Snakes and Arrows.

One bit of between song banter from Geddy had the band promising a long night, and after a 15 minute intermission, they returned to the stage for the second half of the show. We had looked up a set list from a recent show to get an idea of what else the band had in store for us, and there were another 12 or 13 songs in store before an encore. The whole first part was basically the vast majority of the new album (nine songs by my count), backed by an eight piece head banger string section. It was a cool sound, and funny to see violins, violas and cellos rocking out behind the drum kit. As I said, I wasn't totally in love with the new album before the show, but I am after. It was amazing to see practically the entire album done live. The remainder of the second set was Dreamline, Red Sector A, a drum solo, and then two highlights of any Rush show, YYZ (their best live song for my money), and Spirit of the Radio.

After Spirit of the Radio, they left the stage for less than a minute, and came back to do a 12 minute encore of Tom Sawyer, followed by three parts of the 2112 Overture; Overture, Temples of Syrinx, and the Grand Finale.

As always, I left the show in absolute awe of the talent of these three guys, and the amount of sounds they can put out. It was well worth paying more than face value for the tickets, and I am very glad we made the decision to go at the last minute. My only complaint, if there is such a thing, is that they didn't do two of my old favorites, Limelight or Freewill. Or Closer to the Heart for that matter. Or The Trees. Or Red Barchetta. I'll stop there. The first two I saw on the last tour... The other three I have not yet seen live. Maybe someday.

Now that I am playing more guitar, and own too many of them, I watched what Alex Lifeson was playing with a lot of interest. He is a 100% Gibson guy. The majority of songs were played on a black Les Paul, sometimes with a whammy bar. A number of other Les Pauls were trotted out, including natural finish and a dark cherry red. For Far Cry at the end of the first set, he used a bright white hollow body, that judging from the picture here (under "Variations"), may have been an AL-355, or something similar. From what I remember noticing, Geddy use two different Fender Jazz basses, a black one most of the time, sometimes switching to a dark turqouisey blue one. I seem to remember way back in the day that Geddy used Rickenbacker basses, but not any more.

My sister in law posted a link to something on Facebook the other day that could never be more true than right now: nobody ever spoke their last deathbed words as "I went to too many concerts..."

Vampire Counts - Black Knights

This unit of skeleton cavalry is the third complete unit for my Vampire Counts fantasy army. They were completed a month or so ago but I never posted a picture. I have enough figures to make another unit of these, and will paint those in a much darker color scheme. I like the way these turned out; I was going for more of an ethereal and ghostly look rather than a dark and forbidding look. The next batch will go for dark, dingy and dirty.

The completed part of this army now includes 10 crypt ghouls, 5 dire wolves (pics coming soon) and these 5 black knight cavalry.

A few more units and individual figures are in process, including a unit each of zombies and skeletons, another unit of dire wolves, a vampire lord to lead them, and a wight king special character. I have figures stockpiled after that...

Warhammer - Empire Knights

I have been painting a lot recently, but not posting much. I'll try to fix that over the next few days and post some pictures of what I have been working on.

Last night I put the last highlights on this small unit of 5 Empire knights for Warhammer fantasy. As I've said before, I like to mix in some different things beyond my normal historicals, and painting Games Workshop figures is enjoyable because of the tremendous detail on the figures. These obviously aren't painted as any particular unit as shown in the Empire army book, but I felt like doing a blue scheme with yellow and red details for interest, so this is what I ended up with. They were a lot of fun. I assembled these a long time ago and did the first stage of base coating and then stuck them in a box. During that time I apparently forgot something that I didn't notice until it was too late for me to want to do anything about it. They come with shields that I was supposed to glue on at some point in the process (after I had done the basic painting in the areas that the shields would make inaccessible). By the time I remembered it didn't seem worth the trouble.

Looking at the pictures, I will probably go back and add some highlighting to the flag, which I am not happy with yet, and maybe highlight the visible parts of the horses a little better. It's funny how the brutal honesty of a high resolution close up photo makes me want to paint better, or put in just a little more effort.

My next Empire unit will probably be 5 Pistoliers. I should do a block of foot, but I like painting the small units of mounted troops better. Or maybe a great cannon and crew. Or maybe the mounted general. Or maybe...

Rodeo Weekend

Friday night, I did something I had never done before. And then Saturday night, I did it again.

Julia's teen group was going on an outing Friday night, and this time around they were going down to the Flyers' arena to see Professional Bull Riding on tour. When Julia was little, she used to love bull riding on TV, and there used to be one channel where she could find it fairly regularly, so she was very excited at the prospect of seeing it in person. Grace liked the idea as well, so we picked up three tickets cheap on Stub Hub and decided we would go separately. While I can't say as though this is something that has any real interest for me, any chance to get out with the family and do something different is always nice.

We dropped Julia off at 6, and grabbed a quick dinner on the way down for the 8pm show. In the car on the way, we laughed when we got a text message from our good friends across the street asking whether we thought our kids would like a cowboy hat. We texted back something to the effect of "we know where you are going tonight!" When we got there and got to our seats, there were maybe only 5,000 people in the 20,000 seat arena, and we could see Julia a few sections to our left and our friends directly across from us. We all had a good laugh at that, waving at each other like little kids.

As for the event itself, it was different, but fun. The bulls were amazing, and the riders were impressive. The riders were from the expected parts of the US (TX, OK, CO and NC), with many others from Brazil and Australia. I can't imagine how hard it must be to do what they do. They are the best in the world at this, and the vast majority couldn't stay on the the full eight seconds to register a score. There was one bull toward the end that was astounding. Most bulls seemed to fall into two general categories, at least to the untrained eye; the "buckers" and the "spinners." The bull at the end that had the crowd gasping did something I wouldn't have thought possible. It came out of the chute, bucked once or twice, and then jumped straight up in the air several feet off the ground. Vertical. Straight up like on a pogo stick. I still can't believe it. That was Grace's favorite (and mine!). She also like the rodeo clown.

We all had a good time. The music was loud, everything seemed pretty informal, and the crowd was treating it more like a party than anything, and most importantly the girls had fun.

Saturday ended up being something similar. The neighbors were going the Unionville country fair, not far from us, and we decided to go as well. The highlight of that show was to be the second annual Willowdale pro rodeo circuit event at 6pm. Unlike Friday, this event had 7 different kinds of things, including steer wrestling, calf roping, bucking broncos, team roping, women's barrel riding and bull riding (again). As the announcer kept reminding us, these were the best in the northeast US at these events, but on this particular night, the animals came out on top by a very wide margin. Steers wouldn't go down, calves wouldn't get roped, barrels wouldn't stay up, and riders couldn't stay on anything that was moving fast or unpredictably. It was still fun, although it was chilly and the sight lines at the temporary arena weren't very good. If anything, it made me appreciate how good the guys on Friday night had been after not a single rider in this event could stay on for the full eight seconds.

So... Forty plus years of my life with no rodeo, and then two rodeo events in two days. I can't say as though I am a convert by any means, but it was nice to do something completely different. The kids had fun and have asked if we can go again when they come back next year. I guess that a year from now, I just might be ready.

Guitar Lessons

Dave and I have been wanting to get together and play for a while now (since immediately after the last time really), and schedules worked out such that I could get over to his house for a couple hours this afternoon and goof around. I was anxious to get together with him for a couple reasons; first, he hadn't seen my new baby in person yet and I was anxious to see what he had to say about it, and second, the last time we got together he was able to teach me a lot (that stuck) in a fairly short period of time. I was also hoping that he would be able to make a couple of minor adjustments that I felt the new guitar needed.

I will preface my comments on today's session by admitting that I have been happy with the new guitar, but that there are a few things I have had minor reservations about. I expected the tone to be warm, bright and clear. At home it sort of was, but seemed to be missing a little something. This might have been a case of burdening one "copy guitar" with a lifetime of musical expectation that perhaps even the real $2500 version couldn't meet, but I couldn't help feeling that something was missing. String bending was a little difficult, and there seemed to be a lack smoothness, for lack of a better term. I'm not sure how else to describe it, but something just didn't feel as wonderful as I expected it to feel. Not that it was bad, but it was good and not "wow". I kinda had my heart set on "wow".

Prior to showing up at Dave's, I asked for a good general purpose string recommendation, and he said to buy D'Addario "tens", which I did. When I got to Dave's, I proudly unveiled the new purchase and he was suitably impressed (good brother that he is). The first thing he did was plug it into his Bugera tube amp, and I had my first "a-ha" moment. My baby did NOT sound like that at home! Same guitar, same strings, same cabling, nothing changed... but when he plugged in and strummed a few chords... I heard "wow!". I love the amp I have at home (a Line 6 Spider IV hand me down courtesy of Dave) that has all sorts of cool modelling effects (phasing, delay, drive, etc), but for pure clean sound I am now convinced that a nice simple (high quality) tube amp has a special something in terms of sound. This has the very likely possibility of turning into an "oops I did it again" moment in the not-too-distant future...

The remaining hour and a half or so that we spent together today was a combination of a lesson on chords and some pointers on different chord shapes and their use up and down the fretboard, and a chance for Dave to polish his guitar maintenance skills. The strings that came with the 335 looked discolored in places, which is a sign of age and exposure, and I had some questions about the action of the 5th and 6th strings. Dave had no issues with the action (just relax and don't strum so hard!), but the strings did need replacing, which he did. He also raised the low side of the bridge a little just in case, but it probably didn't need it. Before he replaced the strings, he also cleaned and oiled the fretboard, which was surprisingly dirty. After doing so the feel was much smoother, and closer to what I had hoped for and expected.

While Dave worked on my 335, I had the chance to noodle around on a couple of guitars - his Casino and the newly arrived Epiphone SG, which he recently picked up on eBay. The Casino is a true hollow body that is otherwise similar to the 335, and the SG is the signature guitar of Derek Trucks (among others), a fairly recent musical man-crush. The Casino is warm and rich, and I loved the SG. As Dave had mentioned to me earlier, it is incredibly neck-heavy, but sounded wonderful. And an absolute steal at the price he was able to get it for.

All in all, a fun couple of hours. Productive in terms of learning and also a revelation about what a tube amp can sound like. By the end of the session, I had learned some valuable things, but more importantly, Dave had put the "wow" back in my holy grail guitar. Not bad for two hours on a Saturday afternoon...

The Holy Grail... Sort of...

Epiphone ES-335 Pro

I did a very very silly thing today. In a moment of weakness (or was it strength?) I took the plunge and checked a holy grail item off the list. As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been playing a lot more guitar recently and have made some strides toward actually being able to play some things passably well.

One of my favorite bands growing up was the Moody Blues (still is for that matter), and Justin Hayward has always been one of my favorite singer/songwriter/guitarists. His signature guitar is a Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow body. In cherry red. The guitar of Nights in White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon and most other classic Moodies tunes. The guitar that I have seen live in concert at least a dozen times. The guitar that probably more than any other made me want to learn how to play the guitar, or at the very least make me wish I could.

Since a very early age, that guitar (along with Eric Clapton's black Fender Stratocaster "Blackie") has been on the short list of "someday I need to own a guitar like that, even if it's just decoration". It's a very short list, perhaps including only those two plus a Jimmy Page classic sunburst Les Paul and (much more recently) a Derek Trucks red Gibson SG.

Before kids, I checked the black Strat off the list in 1993. Today, after some eBay watching, I went to the local Guitar Center store and bought a little piece of my adolescence. Specifically, an Epiphone Custom Shop Limited Edition ES-335 Pro. Epiphone is Gibson's second brand, and the usual Epiphone version of the ES-335 is referred to as "the Dot" because of the distinctive dot pattern on the fret board. The ES-335 Pro is a limited edition of the Dot with upgraded volume knobs that allow push-pull switching of the pickups from single coil to double coil mode (and rectangular fret inlays, not dots). This has the effect of making the guitar sound more like a Gibson or more like a Fender depending on the setting. The difference is substantial, and a tribute to modern electronics.

The Whole (electric) Gang

I haven't had much of a chance to play around with it yet, but it has a wonderful warm rich tone that is very different from both the Strat and from the Les Paul copy. It could use a minor 5th and 6th string action adjustment to remove a tiny "fret buzz" on the middle of the fretboard, but that is a simple adjustment that Dave can help me make.

Do I need a third guitar (four if you count the hand-me-down Yamaha acoustic)? Of course not. I barely play well enough to justify one nice one, let alone three. And the Strat from twenty years ago is still qualitatively the best of the three instruments, probably by a fairly wide margin. But that misses the point for the most part. Or misses the point entirely. Life is short. Love of music can manifest itself in many ways, not the least of which I suppose is a middle aged guy with a small guitar collection. So I see nothing wrong with indulging a fan-boy moment. Does owning this make me Justin Hayward? Sadly, no. That takes talent, ability, hard work, dedication, luck, a voice, songwriting ability and a time machine. But it sure does put a smile on my face, and there is something to be said for that.

Given that a real Gibson ES-335 goes for $2,200 rock bottom minimum, this is almost certainly as close as I will ever get to my dream guitar. But it's close enough for me.

All the Comforts of Home

Matching Living Room Set

Ever since I made a doll bed for Grace's first American Girl doll last year, I have gotten periodic requests to make something else. Actually, to be honest, I get bombarded with requests to make more things ranging from the simple ("Daddy, make them a remote for their TV"... i.e. a little rectangular block) to the utterly ridiculous ("Daddy, let's build them their own house"), and everything in between. Ever since she figured out that I could do a pretty nice job of building things for her, she seems to like the idea of homemade better than buying store bought pieces. Which is fun, because it is something that she and I can work on together. She helps draw/design what she wants, I figure out how to engineer things, and then she helps me as much as she can with the construction.

The gang making themselves comfortable

While on vacation this week, Grace requested seating for her ever-growing collection of American Girl dolls, now numbering four (and staying at four...). So over a few hours yesterday and today, we whipped up the sofa and pair of chairs shown here. Grace wants them painted, which we haven't done yet, but the construction is finished.

Our pieces tend to be angular and blocky, but I'm not breaking out the router and other assorted goodies for doll furniture. Not yet anyway. That being said, it's pretty cool what the two of us are able to accomplish with a bunch of 1" clear pine boards of various widths and a compound miter saw.

The matching coffee table, entertainment center and flat screen TV are in progress. Yep, I'm serious.

A New Family Member

As brother Dave's guitar playing has flourished, the urge to upgrade and expand his collection of instruments and equipment has obviously been strong. I have been the beneficiary of this in the past, with a beginner Yamaha acoustic and a Line-6 modelling amp to show for it. Dave's most recent purchase was a very nice Epiphone Casino hollow body electric (Gibson's second brand version of the Gibson ES330). The Casino is perhaps best known as the guitar used by all of the Beatles at different points, and by John Lennon for most of his time with them. The Casino is a true hollow body, and very light, but otherwise similar to my "holy grail guitar", the Gibson ES335 semi-hollow body (in Justin Hayward cherry red of course...). But I digress...

Apparently, a strong request made around Dave's household was that if a new electric guitar came into the house, one of the existing ones should leave, therefore maintaining... balance... shall we say. Dave mentioned to me that he was going to keep the Fender Telecaster and put his Epiphone Les Paul copy on Craig's List.

At that point, it seemed an awful shame to lose a member of the extended family, so I purchased the guitar from Dave, and now it will live with me. In a way, this is a bit of silliness, but I can say that I have been fooling around on my guitar more than I ever have, and have gotten myself one step above total hack status, so what the heck. At the very least, it gives my Strat someone to commiserate with; the two guitars can hang out in the basement and bemoan the fact that they were not blessed with a more talented owner.

Dave brought the Les Paul over this past weekend and I played it for a while with Dave using my Strat. He taught me some things, and a few of them actually clicked. It was very productive and energizing.

So between the two of us, we now have a Statocaster, a Telecaster, a Casino and a Les Paul copy. Plus a bass. And three acoustics. And amps. And electronics. Oh well, so much for balance (but it is a lot of fun!).

My Little Sous Chef

Dredge... dip... fry...

One of my favorite things, but something I rarely blog about here, is my love of cooking and good food and drink (there is a separate cooking link...). Far removed from my day job, the things that interest me the most in my spare time are almost all outlets for creativity; wargaming (the building things part...), cooking, writing and music.

With that in mind, it gives me great pleasure that Grace has very much taken to the idea of cooking. She watches Food Network and its spin off The Cooking Channel. She will also go out of her way to help me in the kitchen with whatever she can. Even as an elementary school kid, I have relished getting her involved in the kitchen. As we say, everything tastes better when you cook it yourself. I am on vacation this week, burning some time off with the family before the kids go back to school next week, which means I have time to cook. Yesterday, shopping for dinner at Whole Foods, Julia noticed some beautiful locally grown eggplant in the produce section and requested one of her favorites, eggplant parm, for dinner tonight. I shopped for the ingredients today, and Grace and I made it for dinner.

...and turn when properly browned

Grace has gotten pretty good at basic kitchen tasks like stirring and whisking, and has developed good knife skills for someone her age (or any age for that matter). She knows to flatten one side of something she is cutting to make it stable on the cutting board, and can do a large dice, medium dice, fine dice or rough chop without too much guidance. But the most important thing is that she enjoys it and it is something that we can do together.

Tonight, I was in charge of prepping the eggplant so that she could be the one to fry the slices in the skillet prior to assembling everything in the baking dish. I prepped and sliced. She dredged, dipped and fried. Her attention to detail on the safety aspects was good to see; not splattering hot oil by turning the slices the proper way and other details that make for a safe cooking experience. We had a blast.

Oh... and it was delicious.

Julia Meets Ryan Howard

Ryan throws out the first pitch

Julia had a special treat today, and I was fortunate to be able to take a day off from work to see it; she met Phillies superstar slugger 1st baseman Ryan Howard.

We had gotten an email a couple weeks ago that Ryan Howard (or the Phillies, or someone...) had been  put in touch with the Challenger League, a group of special needs kids playing little league softball, and that Ryan Howard would be coming to a special game there were organizing. The plan was that he would show up, take some pictures, say a few words, and then hang around for an hour or so while the kids played.

Julia was excited, and concerned that it would be rained out, but we got lucky with a nice warm but not overly hot day, and it was somewhat overcast which made it not seem too bad under the sun for a few hours. Ryan was on time, the event went off in a pretty organized fashion, notwithstanding all the extra people that had come out of the woodwork for this particular game. He came out, said a few words, threw out the opening pitch, and then stood around on the field chatting with and encouraging the kids.

Julia leads off the game

The challenger league games are non-competitive, with each player on each team getting to bat once in each of the three innings. Everybody gets to run the bases, and everybody scores. Obviously, they don't keep score and it has nothing to do with winning and losing, but just having fun and being active with their peers.

Julia - pleased to be at third base

This special occasion was a one inning game. Julia was the very first batter, and grounded a sharp single to right field. She had a blast. Somehow in and around all the adults taking pictures, they actually managed to finish the one inning, and then there was some time for pictures before Ryan had to leave.

It was a very nice day for Julia (and the rest of us). Ryan is a big big man. And very nice with the kids. It is often overlooked how much time some of these guys spend in the community doing things like this, and it is nice to be able to recognize those who do. I also have to admit that Ryan has been my favorite Phillie for years now, and while I think my days of hero-worshipping athletes are long since past, it was still nice to get to say hi to him. Thanks, Ryan, for coming out to the game!

Julia with Ryan Howard

As an aside, the Phillies are playing the Braves tonight at home, and Ryan crushed a two-run home run in the bottom of the first inning... He is coming off a ruptured achilles tendon last fall, and missed much of the season this year, but he is back playing now. He doesn't look great yet, but he's getting there. He did have a very noticeable limp at the event today. Hopefully that gets better with time.

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

Selected Pictures, July 28, 2012

Mercury 7 capsule

Apollo 11 command module

Me262

SBD Dauntless

F4F Wildcat

Spitfire Mark VII

P51-D Mustang

bf 109 G-6

A6M5 Zero

It's good for the rest of us that there are those select few crazy enough to ride a tiny hunk of metal into outer space, perched atop enough combustible material to blow up a small city...

Smithsonian American History Museum

Selected Pictures - Saturday July 28, 2012

Regimental Colors - 84th US Colored Infantry

Gunboat Philadelphia

Italianate Renaissance armor

British Grenadier bearskin - American Revolution

French 4 lb Cannon

ACW - 6 lb cannon bored out for 12 lb shell

I took many more pictures than this, but these were some of the nicer items.

Washington DC - Day 2

Sunday July 29, 2012

Day 2 of our DC trip began with a free breakfast at the hotel, after which we made our way back out into the early morning heat. Having stopped at Ford's Theatre to try to gather the relevant information for the virtual cache the day before, we had decided that we would come back this morning and take the whole tour. I am very glad we did. We got tickets and had a short wait before filing into the theater itself and listening to a talk by a park service guide. It was very interesting, as it is a subject I don't know a whole lot about, and it was very surreal to be sitting in the front row facing the stage with the President's box just off to the right. I'm not sure the kids were all that impressed, but the adults liked it.

Ford's Theatre - Lincoln's box

We had 10:30am tickets for the Spy Museum, so we decided to come back and see the Petersen House (the Lincoln Death House), which is across the street from the theater, after doing the other for the kids.

I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into with this spy museum, as it sounded incredibly cheesy and touristy to me. It turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. It was a museum dedicated to the history of spying and espionage throughout history. There were displays on all sorts of different time periods, as well as ciphers, gadgets, famous events in history, etc. The very large section on Cold War spying between the Soviet bloc and the West was fascinating. They had a very impressive collection of all the different things that cameras and listening devices have been hidden in over the years, as well as hidden weapons, poison pills and disguises. What I thought was going to be something just for the kids ended up being one of the highlights of the trip.

By the time we got done in the spy museum everyone was hungry, so we had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe nearby. The memorabilia in these places is always nice, but the food was pretty bad, and slow. The low light of the trip for sure.

Petersen House - Lincoln's death bedroom

The Petersen House was interesting. The wasn't too much to see, but once again it was an experience to see the bedroom in which Lincoln spent his final hours and then died. After having been shot in the theater, it was deemed too far to move Lincoln back to the White House (which isn't all that far away), so he was moved into this private house across the street.

An unexpected addition to the day was a side trip to the American Girl store in McLean VA. Grace has been very much into her American Girl dolls recently, and there isn't an AG store in our area. Since we were in another major city, she asked Mom to look up whether there was a store in DC, and the one in VA was not that far out of our way for the drive home, so we made the stop. We ended up getting McKenna (the gymnast doll) because of Grace's interest in gymnastics, especially now that the Summer Olympics are on. This was probably the highlight of the trip for her.

After getting the doll, we were back on the road, and home by about 6:30 after an uneventful drive.

DC really is a great place to visit, and something we have neglected over the years. There is so much to see, and we barely even scratched the surface. With kids in tow, I don't think we even did a comprehensive visit to the sites we went to, but that is to be expected I guess. Going in the heat of the summer is not the best time, but it is when the kids are out of school and is easier to manage. With so much left to see, I wouldn't mind going back next year, and I hope we will.

Washington DC - Day 1

Saturday July 28, 2012

My wife and I have been trying to decide on some things we could do over the remainder of this summer to get out of the house with the kids for a couple of days here or there. One of the things we had discussed was sightseeing in Washington DC. I was a little put off by the idea of it being about a thousand degrees and humid there at this time of year, but that was balanced by being anxious to get back and see some of the sights. I don't think I have been there in about 30 years, other than driving through (or around) on the way to somewhere else. We decided that it was close enough to do a simple weekend trip, leaving Saturday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon. This had the advantage of both not requiring a vacation day as well as being a cheap trip, requiring only one night in a hotel.

Capitol and torn-up Mall

We left home at 8:45am after a leisurely wake up, and hit very little traffic on the way south. We did 95 south as far as Baltimore and then the Baltimore Washington parkway between Baltimore and Washington. We crossed into DC on 50 west almost exactly two hours after leaving home, and pulled into the Grand Hyatt at 10th and H street at 11:20. Check in was 3pm but they had a room ready for us, so we dumped our luggage and went up the Grand Club on the top floor for a quick snack. Part of the overnight package that Amp had signed us up for was use of the Club, and the kids thought the idea of free snacks/drinks/desserts, etc, whenever they wanted them was one of the highlights of the trip.

The three main things that we wanted to see were the Smithsonian American History museum (for all but especially me), the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum (for all of us), and the International Spy museum (for the kids). The hotel was in a terrific location, being only about a 10 minute walk from everything (Capitol, Mall, White House, and all the museums). The American History museum was picked as first up, as it was a short walk south, and shouldn't be too bad a walk despite the mid 90's temperatures and awful humidity. The national museums are all free, so it was just a question of showing up and getting in line to get in.

Another thing that I had looked at before leaving home was where there might be easily do-able geocaches in the area we would be in, and there were many, with the Mall being littered with Virtuals. I would be happy if I could get just a couple. The first attempt at one would be as we walked past Ford's Theatre (the site of the Lincoln assassination). Ford's Theatre turned out to be just around the corner from our hotel, but we couldn't get the required information, as we would need to get into the building or do more investigating than we wanted to take the time for then.

There was a brief wait in the heat outside the American History museum, but it was well worth it. This was a place I could have spent much more time in than we did, with the kids' patience wearing a little thin by the end. Among the highlights for me were the actual Star Spangled Banner flag, and a wide variety of American Revolution and Civil War artifacts.

We then took a cab back to the hotel to freshen up and get a snack before heading back out to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. I had been to this museum a couple times before, but it is still fun to see, and the planes and space artifacts were of more interest to the kids than the previous museum had been. I am still amazed that people would have gone into space in those tiny little capsules with such primitive looking controls and electronics. [Favorite pics from these two museums will be in following posts]

Dinner at Cure

I got my first DC cache, a virtual right outside the Air and Space museum door, and then we planned to walk the Mall a little for some sightseeing, but they were doing construction and the whole area around where we were was torn up and fenced off. Instead, we hailed a cab and had ourselves driven around past the White House on the way back to the hotel.

Dinner was at a restaurant called Cure Bar and Bistro in the hotel, and it was absolutely fantastic.

The kids wanted to get the dessert at the Grand Club rather than at the restaraunt, so we did that, and then made our way back to our room to watch some of the Summer Olympics on TV before calling it a night. It was a long and busy (and hot!) day, but a very good one. Tomorrow's plan is to see Ford's Theatre and the International Spy Museum for the kids before heading home.